PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – It had been 10 straight games with at least a point, the streak ended Saturday night at the worst possible time. Boston took control in the second period, winning a wild one 6-4. The loss combined with wins by Detroit, Washington and Philadelphia but the Pens a point behind all three with two games to play. Red Wings and Caps also have two games left, Flyers have one.
The Bruins got their first two goals off Alex Nedeljkovic, who was making his 10th consecutive start, 14 seconds apart in the second period to take a 2-0 lead before Bryan Rust would answer on a great pass from Drew O’Connor to make it 2-1. After Boston scored a third goal, Pens head coach Mike Sullivan made a change, putting Tristan Jarry in net for the first time since the Colorado game.
“The first one I had, puck was between my legs there,” Nedeljkovic said. “I thought I had it, took a whack at it and it found its way in. The second one, I just didn’t control a rebound. The third one, I just got beat from distance. There is no good explanation. I don’t know, it just wasn’t good enough.”
“I thought we gave (Boston) some pretty high-quality looks,” Sullivan said. “This was not an easy game to assess the goaltending when you give up the type of looks that we did.”
“(Nedeljkovic) has given us some great hockey here. He’s battling hard for us. The decision I made was based on just trying to change momentum for our group, see if it could give us a jolt. It was more about that than anything.”
Jarry would give up a goal in his first shot, a short-hander from Brad Marchand before Michael Bunting made it 4-2 Boston after two.
O’Connor put some life back in it with a grinding short-handed goal where he went around Marchand as he was whacking at him to make it 4-3 with 15-and-a-half minutes left.
“That was a terrific goal and it gave the whole building energy and the team, as well,” Sullivan said. “We talked in between periods of just getting the next goal to get in striking distance within one goal and that goal did it for us. ... It's just a terrific goal by (O'Connor)."
“OC makes it 4-3, you don’t want to give up that fourth one we did shorthanded, but OC got us a big one there, gave us a lot of momentum. I think the fifth one was tough. They got a lot of momentum when they got that fifth one.”
That was by Morgan Geekie with 5:50 to play followed by an empty netter. A second Bunting goal, late, finished the scoring at 6-4.
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“I thought we were working pretty hard,” O’Connor said. “We just gave up some easy offense to them we can’t really allow.”
“We just got to get back to what was working for us for the last few games,” Bunting said. “Just working hard and making it hard on them. We got to look forward to the next game and we are still in this.”
“This one stings a bit,” said defenseman Erik Karlsson. “We didn’t play bad by any means. We just didn’t have that extra kick you need to beat a good team like the Bruins.”
“I mean, you gotta worry about the next one,” Crosby said. “That’s what we’ve been doing here for a long time. We’re practiced pretty well at that, and done a good job of just moving by it, so I think we’ve got to do it here.”
Up Next
The last regular season game at home as the Pens host Nashville at 7p. The Predators have clinched a playoff spot and currently in the top Wild Card spot in the West with 99 points.